Monday Roundup #24

In the absence of concert listings, my regular Monday dispatches have fallen off. After bringing some life to the blog with the "bumping into" series, I figure I should get back in the groove. I'm guessing that this will be a bit like what used to get shoved into the end of the post when I was doing listings — some bandcamp suggestions, nods to a few livestreams, and sundry community notes (email me if you have anything that needs broadcast in the latter category!). Plus maybe a look back through the MFS archives.

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Community notes:

• Another venue update, following on the couple posted here last week: it looks like the space hosting The Mod Club, which announced its demise last year, has new management and a new name (The Axis Club). (It looks like news of this came out back in April, but it didn't cross my path 'til I saw some concert announcements this week, so maybe it's news to you as well.)

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Livestream nation:

• Exit Points returns on Wednesday (June 30th) with another pair of ad hoc electroacoustic ensembles, as well as the customary online collaborative jam. Expect to hear from Fae Sirois, Marc-Alexandre Chan, and thispatcher in the first set and Dey Kim, Shay, Tyson Headon and Edward Kennington in the second. Free to stream on Twitch (with donations accepted!) — the hub for all relevant info can be found here.
• Not "live" in the sense of "happening while you watch", but this set from the outskirts of Niamey, Niger with Mdou Moctar and his band comes highly recommended. The set is in celebration of the release of the tasty new Afrique Victime album — and under current circumstances, it's unclear when we'll be seeing international superstars like Moctar (one of the great fiery guitarists of our time) on local stages.

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Feat. Karen Ng:

• By a happy coincidence, two new songs popped up on my feeds this week with guest appearances by Karen Ng. A new single from Lee Paradise has Ng on sax and flute (as well as vox from Blunt Chunks), while a pre-album single drop from New Chance's highly-anticipated Real Time has some more smokey sax licks — alongside a highly-inventive video from Vic Cheong that gets a lot of mileage from some lo-tech staging.

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It happened this week...

• ...on June 30, 2009 at the Silver Dollar Room.

Zoobombs - Mo'Funky (Part 1)

• ...on July 4, 2009 at Harbourfront Centre.

King Sunny Adé - unknown

[Do remember that you can click on the tags below to go back and find the original posts (and often, more stuff) from these artists.]

2009 In Review: Best Concerts (Part I)

So, in 2009, I went to one hundred and thirty shows, give or take, as long you consider anything from a three-song acoustic in-store set to an all-day mini-festival to be one "show". And looking over my list of gigs for the year, I can say there's not much that I regret going to. Which means, of course, that everything falls on that big ol' sliding scale of liked it some/liked it some more. To come up with the best of the bunch, I went with that unscientific method of scrolling down the list and stopping at those things that elicited that little internal smile and nod. There were a lot of other shows that were really good, but these — presented mostly in chronological order — stood out. To, y'know, save effort, I'll shamelessly quote myself as much as possible here, but links are provided should you want my whole view from at the time.

CMW Saturday Night

Lee's Palace / The Horseshoe / The Silver Dollar. Saturday, March 14, 2009.

A busy night of venue hopping not only served to re-establish the bona fides of some old faves (Jon-Rae Fletcher, Young Galaxy), but ending the night hanging out at the Silver Dollar proved to be prophetic — not only would I end up spending a lot more time than previous here in 2009, but I'd be introduced to a couple of my fave live acts of the year, in The Disraelis and The Hoa Hoa's. Of the latter, I noted "they managed to press the exact buttons to excite me," though I don't think I realized then how devoted I was going to become. Like anything you fall for, I guess, it's not always the one you were expecting.

I don't have any audio from that show, but I ended up posting a lot of live Hoa Hoa's.

Julie Doiron

($100 / Rick White) The Horseshoe. 2009-03-26 (Thursday)

AND:

Julie Doiron (Herman Dune / Shotgun Jimmie)

Lee's Palace 2009-10-27 (Tuesday)

Through whatever combination of circumstances, I had never been to a Julie Doiron show, so this was quite an immersion. The Horseshoe gig floored me. Going to shows involves an unspoken kind of social contract, where we all agree to shut and listen to various degrees. But it's rare and precious when a whole room of people seem to really get that, and are held, rapt, by an artist's fragile sounds: "Leading off with an a capella number, there was almost unimaginable silence in the room — the only other sound to be heard was the dishwasher at the bar. This sort of became a mutually reinforcing spell, as the crowd realized that Julie (happy throughout, though visibly fighting a cold) was quite into the moment and kept working to prolong it, coming up on the spot with the idea for more songs to play solo before bringing the band out." The rocking part of the show was nearly as good, close to falling apart in the most delightful way.

And then, her October show was almost its equal, even in a bigger room with a totally different band and heaps of expectation on my part. Incredible work.

No audio from the February show, but I do have a couple tracks posted from October.

Ray Price

(opening for Willie Nelson)

Massey Hall. 2009-04-08 (Wednesday)

Setting aside the comic weirdness of the whole Billy Bob Thornton imbroglio — I missed the real escapades by a night — the most memorable part of this show was a wonderful set by an 83 year old titan: "cast your mind over that for a moment — I saw a guy on stage who was a roommate with Hank Williams, and who inherited his band after Hank's death. It staggers the mind to think that history and legend are still that close to us!" No longer the swingin' honky-tonker he was in the '50's, Price instead used his rich voice to unleash a torrent of hits in a more countrypolitan vein, and it was time-stoppingly sublime. That Willie Nelson, no spring chicken or slouch himself, was the icing on the cake only underlines how wonderful this was.

King Sunny Adé

(appearing with Femi Kuti)

Harbourfront Centre. 2009-07-04 (Saturday)

There was music and dancing and I was in just such a mood and the sun was coming down just so. But —— sometimes words can't do it, and sometimes recordings can't capture it. But whatever it was, I was lifted up and rocked by the jùjú master's set: "In retrospect, I'm mildly at a loss to explain as to why I was so into this — but that's one of the reasons to go to concerts, isn't it? For those rare moments where your self can get past itself and just feel the music in an unmediated way. Which, despite the intoxicating tools that can help it along, usually just has to come over you of itself. There was simply a presence to the show that transformed itself into one of those ineffably sublime moments."

My recording from the show is nice enough, but this was one of those times it didn't capture the whole vibrant spark of the show.

Kemer Yousuf

Afrofest, Queen's Park. 2009-07-12 (Sunday)

One of the most magnetic showmen I saw all year — how many local indie artists are beloved enough that people would scramble over one another to stick twenty dollar bills to their sweaty foreheads? "...danceable stuff, and fronted by a man who had a Mr. Please Please Please level of dedication to entertaining — moving around the stage, dropping to his knees, pumping up the crowd." The keystone of a rather fine day at Queen's Park, including Mauritian mystic Menwar and the conscious party grooves of superstar Oumou Sangaré.

Get in on Kemer Yousuf's rockin' party here.

catl / The Disraelis

Mitzi's Sister. 2009-07-31 (Friday)

On a night that I could have just gone home after seeing a movie, I figured I might as well check out a gig as well, and ended up in Parkdale in a decidedly-less-than-packed joint. And sometimes you're just in the right mood, and the bands nail it and it's all fantastic. Local blues-scuzzers catl worked their always-reliable drunk dancin' delirium, but on this night it was their guests' set that turned me into a disciple: "...enjoyable despite — because of? — the small group of mostly friends out to see them. At any rate, the space felt ideal for the band's sound, which connotes a slightly regretful dreamy lassitude."

I also got a really nice capture of the sound that night that you can check out here.

Part II can be found here.

Recording: King Sunny Adé

Artist: King Sunny Adé

Song: Unknown^*

Recorded at Harbourfront Centre, July 4, 2009.

King Sunny Adé - unknown

My notes for this gig can be found here.

^* Anyone know the title to this track? Let me know in a comment!

Gig: Femi Kuti / King Sunny Adé

Femi Kuti / King Sunny Adé

Harbourfront Centre. Saturday, July 4, 2009.

I was really looking forward to this double-header at Harbourfront with much more anticipation than usual — a chance to see two superstars of Nigerian music. Very much a co-headlining kind of deal, as both artists got extended, two-hour sets. And although he was up first, King Sunny Adé was the undisputed champion of the night for me, turning in what felt like the best set I've seen this year.

Maybe the sun had something to do with it. In a full switch away from the cold breeze of the day before, Saturday turned out to be warm and sunny, and as I took my spot I had plenty time of sit and read my paper and absorb the late afternoon sun pouring on the back of my neck. Once again, given the crowd, I'm glad I went down early — there's no way I'd have lasted through such an extended night of entertainment without a spot to sit. So the fact that the sun had lulled me into a mellow sort of state probably had something to do with the receptive state I was in when the dozen players in the band took the stage to start playing.

An all-male affair, King Sunny Adé's band included percussion and several talking drums; bass, drums and synths; plus three co-vocalists, even though everyone sang. The large ensemble sounded like there were exactly enough players on stage to produce the masterful brand of jùjú music made famous by Adé, a master pop synthesist who expanded the Yoruban traditional music, based on the rhythms of talking drums, with a wide variety of influences — none of which is essential to know, as the rhythm and energy speaks for itself.¹

The show was also a compelling visual spectacle. Many of the songs came with their own little ritualized interactions between Sunny and the other singers — at one point miming tugging on a rope, later passing around a metaphorical hot potato. And then as a topper, the band was joined by two female dancers, who came out to vigourously shake their tail fathers. It was while urging them on that Sunny picked up his guitar, the only time during the night he would flex his virtuoso guit chops.

In retrospect, I'm mildly at a loss to explain as to why I was so into this — but that's one of the reasons to go to concerts, isn't it? For those rare moments where your self can get past itself and just feel the music in an unmediated way. Which, despite the intoxicating tools that can help it along, usually just has to come over you of itself. There was simply a presence to the show that transformed itself into one of those ineffably sublime moments.

Although it doesn't capture the entire whatyoucallit of the occasion, you can check out a track from this set here.

After that, Femi Kuti had his work cut out not to be upstaged. Added to that, in my my mind at least, he was also competing with his younger brother Seun, who I'd seen in the same venue almost exactly a year earlier. That was a fantastic, sweaty gig — non-stop action from a crew that included many veterans from Fela's band. The matchbook cover version of the critical consensus on the two Kutis is that while Seun was playing his father's songs with his father's band, Femi was doing more to push forward the boundaries of Afrobeat.

Regardless, Femi took the stage to driving Afrobeat, as if you show he can play it straight-up, and powerfully so, when he wants to. From the start, the crowd were standing, and would pretty much stay that way for the duration. Femi was backed by a ten-piece band (including five horn players) plus three dancer/backup singers, and came with his own conversational shorthand, ending anything requiring a response from the crowd with a ululating "la-la-la-la?", which the crowd would answer back with a "la-la-la-la!" To my ears, the wider palate of influences² that he brings to his version of Afrobeat really came out in the middle of the songs, when the traditional groove would give way to jazzy exploration or some other excursion away from the music's centre.

While he was certainly the undisputed leader of the band, conducting the players and generally weaving their parts into a rich, textured whole, he wasn't entirely stingy with the spotlight, granting the various ensemble members their solos. For his own musical contributions,besides vocals and his many appeals to the crowd, he pitched in on sax, trumpet and keyboards, the latter especially bringing Fela to mind as he laid down Miles Davis-like flattened drones. Some of his music — including some horn solos where he seemed to be reaching for some notes he couldn't quite nail — had the sense of being slightly deliberately "off", the broken note that brings everything else into brilliant focus. Ultimately, I found myself more enjoying the music despite the excursions than because of them, which may be why I left feeling that this set was not the equal of Sunny Adé's — nor of Seun Kuti a year ago. Which is not to say this wasn't a pretty good show — the band was excellent, the tunes were pretty solid, and Femi was a pretty charismatic presence on stage, filled with amusing monologues and discourses on the state of Africa and the world, the Shrine, Nigerian politics, expatriates and more. All told, a fabulous night. What luck we have, living in a city where he get to see incrdible concerts like this — and for free!

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¹ Of course, that indicates that I was enjoying the music on a different level than the large ex-pat contingent to the crowd, many of whom were singing along to every song.

² At one point, Femi reeled off a list of his influences: "Do you know Dizzy Gillespie? Do you know Miles Davis? Do you know Duke Ellington? Do you know Tanya Tucker? Do you know Billie Holliday?" Strangely enough, I seemed to be the only one gawping around, wondering, "did he just say Tanya Tucker?"